


The Amazing Invisible Mercury Man (I Was A Teenage Quicksilver Cowboy)

by newredshoes



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/pseuds/newredshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill Denbrough never remembers who rides to his rescue when he (doesn't) dream at night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Amazing Invisible Mercury Man (I Was A Teenage Quicksilver Cowboy)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so very, very much to Genarti and Olivia Circe for their encouragement and their fantastic on-the-fly betas. And thanks to 24_centuries, without whose prompting I might never have read this book!
> 
> Written for 24_centuries

Bill Denbrough doesn't dream. Those things he doesn't remember in the morning really happen, when he's closed his eyes and let the black take him, every night a dare. When he's--

* * *

\--twenty-two slots in the storm drain. He counts them, standing there in whatever he's wearing. It's not a slicker, it's his skin turned inside out. He remembers talking with somebody about the rules of dreaming. You're not supposed to be able to read, or remember numbers, even if suddenly you're fluent in French or you know the switchboard code to reach the King of Micronesia. Who told him that? Why does he know? Somebody's an expert on this sort of nothing fact.

The answer floats somewhere above and behind him. It _floats_ like a _(boat)_ that sticks in your _(throat!! Hey, kid, you wanna balloon? Come have a closer look!)_

I'm inside out! Bill gurgles wetly, only his voicebox is shivering in the rain, and it's not raining water but little die-cast typesetting sorts. Their iron edges slice at him, but it's the metal itself that makes the whole scene smell like blood. They clatter to the brick-lined street with the steady patter of hail. When they bounce, they stutter.

"Freshly baked at our very own Kitchener location!" crows a voice from beneath the prison bars set into the curb. "Why else do you think it's raining these?" A bulbous, many-colored face flickers in the sewer dark, cancerous and oviform. "Happy Easter!"

Bill is so startled that his skin turns back in on himself, and he's as naked an ape as he should be. When he looks down to check himself, he notices the bricks are all made of papier-mache. One block gives when he presses his heel into it. The millionfold letter casts no longer hiss as they strike the ground but squelch. "I let you have that book, by the way," the voice continues, jolly and relentless as the little bouncy ball commanding you to zippity-fucking-doo-dah, kiddies, your parents still don't want you for a few more hours yet. (The bricks _are_ Bill's book, the manuscript he just sent off and for which he hopes only that someone will read it before it gets sent back bearing its REJECTED stamp.) "It's not a bribe, sonny, it's a gentlemen's agreement. You let me have mine, and you can have all yours and more. I've gotta keep you in line, though. Between the lines -- get it?"

_(Har har har! IT gets you!)_

"What bribe?" Bill asks, enunciating. Is he having a good old-fashioned prophetic dream?

 _Hang on,_ another voice interrupts, from just behind Bill's shoulder. _Hang on, that's not the way it works in the funny pictures, senhorr. Ah say, now ah say I got ta most strenuously--_

All the ink leaking from the paper bricks congeals and rises up. **I suggest,** it roars, **you have a lot to unlearn.** Bill throws up his hands against the oncoming tidal surge, and thrusts his--

* * *

\--fists full of flimsy cotton bedsheets. The face beneath his has clear skin and blonde hair, and she's moaning, her eyes fluttering shut, but Bill can't shake the feeling that this isn't the right one, that nothing about the right one would _flutter._ He's sixteen and he's not picky, but this isn't as good as last night, when _(she)_ held him between her thighs, as taut as the rubbers on a slingshot, and he whispered a word he'd never known before, and it was _hile. Hile, hile, oh--_

Ooooooooowwwwhhhh. The hairs on the back of Bill's sweaty neck stand up. Hot, rancid breath steams across his skin, and a new voice breathes in his ear. _Now now now. You're not allowed in there, Billy. Have all the lovely cunt you want, but you keep away from hers. She was never in the picture, boyo. Remember to forget that. She's just a little slut anyhow, you're bound for something classier than that._ The words enter his mind unbidden, along the same avenues as the dialogue he writes. Something is still heaving and growling at his shoulder. The blonde bombshell can't see it; she only reacts to Bill's having stopped. She pouts and squirms beneath him, a Hollywood coquette only half-eaten. Bill can't bring himself to move, pinned between them.

The werewolf roars, and the blonde girl bares her teeth, and there are claws raking into him front and back, and he's screaming too loud to hear the report of the gunshot, but someone else's howls rise above the fray, and it doesn't matter that there's an undercurrent of laughter in them, because he's reminded of his battle cry, and it's "HI YO, silver bullets! Gotta love the classics! There's only one way to boogie when you're faced with a bogey. Come on, Big Bill, you know the moves to this groove! Say it with me: HI YO--"

* * *

"--silver lining to this, surely, don't you think?"

Bill can't believe that he's boring enough at thirty-five to dream about contract negotiations. "Look," he says into the telephone in his study. "I'll have to call you back. I'm not that guy who dreams about work like this."

"But Bill," the person on the other end of the line chirps eagerly, "tonight you can tell me where you get your ideas from. It's the only time you'll ever have the right answer. Don't you want to know?"

Bill considers this. "From life, I suppose." The answer only disturbs him after he hangs up.

It's a business trip to the unreal city. Audra loves Los Angeles, but Bill can't summon more than bemusement on its behalf. It's the worst-constructed spiderweb in the world, all criss-crossing concrete and asphalt and too much of all walks caught in the raggedy lattice. It irritates him that he has to drive everywhere. At least in this town they know something about entertainment. The transition from desk chair to front seat is unremarkably seamless. He flips on the radio dial.

"Hello hello hello, Angelinos and everyone else! Thanks for tuning in to WYZE, The Penny, coming to you on your FM band at twenty-seven megaHertz from the edge of space and time! A special congratulations to you for tuning in: you've won! Actually," the disc jockey continues, and serrated pins sink their teeth in along the length of Bill's spine, "your lives are fucking clown cars of professional success, aren't they. Your careers are as chock-full of nuts and sweets as a goddamned candy bar! I hope you'll take that into account during our quarter-centennial pledge drive. That'll be coming up sooner than you think, and gee, I hope you'll remember to contribute by not contributing! But don't worry, we have all sorts of campaigns to keep that the furthest thing from your mind!"

A cacophony of sound effects and aural pratfalls chase each other through the speakers like the Keystone Cops on the trail of the fast-talking announcer. "All we ask of you, kids, is that you think back long and hard on what it was like. Sure, some folks went missing, but you didn't miss them, didja? No way, Jose, as they still say from coast to coast! And you're not going to miss the fun this time around. No little dead nobodies turning up in the streams you play in, no blood only you can see! No more lepers or nasties or giant birds always on your tail to make sure you learn your lesson good! Ayup, and no more fuckin' losers to hang out with, sluts and hypos and lardasses and n--"

The radio fizzes and spits. Bill feels hot tears seeping down his cheeks. Traffic has come to a standstill: he is trapped in a gridlock of bones and Boschian machinery. In the silence, an appraising, visceral silence, Bill's sternum quakes like a straitjacket.

"It appears," the DJ purrs, "it appears we have a caller. A local boy but not a native son. What've you got to say for our listeners?"

"Hello?"

"Hell-o, you're on the air."

"Hallo, ees thees zee Penny-peench stay-shun?"

Bill feels the jagged teeth slashing over the radio waves. "This is exactly who you think it is!"

"Fan _tas_ tic!" The Voice pours out the speakers and fills the car like smoke in a clubhouse. "I just wanted to call in and remind all our listeners that we already done done you, man!" Bill blinks: a tremor runs up the muscles in his arms. "We put holes in your carcass, we torched that castle. Been there, took the snapshot, got the keychain, smoked the post-coital cigarette. _Comprende? Capiche?_ And as for our radio audience, which I think may total about seven, but that's the business for you, I want to remind you crazy losers out there that this blowhard is deep fried and reheated, and ladies and gentlemen, he did not come out of the plastic wrap looking so good."

"I hear you," the disc jockey snarls into his mic. "I know exactly where to find everything you love--"

The Voice snorts. "Hey, I understand, you gotta make your show. There are ratings to think of. But don't play chicken with us. We remember you, but don't forget, me boyo, you remember us." Music tries to shoulder in, an ominous rumble of distorted guitars and thrashing drumsticks and screaming Brits. The Voice just laughs. Bill can almost see the face, the head thrown back, roaring--

"Don't you forget, _you_ remember _us!_ You remember us! Chew on that, you big--"

* * *

\--Bill Denbrough doesn't dream. Not since he was a little boy. It's not an interesting story how that happened, in and of itself. But when he wakes up in the morning, he has an itch in his writing hand. Someone he almost knows has thrown his voice, sure as an Ed Sullivan act, into Bill's head. _Where do your ideas come from?_ the interviewer always asks. He never knows, but today he'll write a hero who runs in a thousand directions at once.


End file.
